Now this is one of the few pages that all I will do is write about The
life that Edgar Bergen lead. Now I will not use exact dates because
the source of information that I got this from did not have dates.
I hope that this page will help you to learn about this wonderful life.

Edgar Bergen was always shy. His real name
was Edgar Bergren, he was the second son of Swedish immigrants. He was
born in Chicago and grew up at a dairy farm in Decatur, Michigan.
Edgar loved to spend most of his time traveling with Void Vile Shows.
When he was 11 he sent 25 cents and got a book on vantrilquseime.
Edgar Bergren was only 16 when his dad John Bergren died, after John's
death the family moved back to Chicago. Then Bergen worked part time
at a Silent Movie house. He hand made his first dummies and performed
at Church socials and other places were the town got together.
But it was in Ms. Angel's history class that he doodled Charlie.
He patterned Charlie after a wise craken
Irish news boy in Decatur. He gave his sceatch and $27.00 to Theodore
Mac the local bar tender and amateur wood carver. Charlie
got his last name McCarthy, after Theodore (Bergen got McCarthy from Mac).
Bergen spent the next 10 years with a traveling
Circus that went to Chatacua and Lyceum as a Magician, cartoonist, and
ventriloquist. While he was with the Circus a man suggested that
he should shorten his last name, so Edgar Bergren became Edgar Bergen.
His mother Nell Bergren would much rather see her son in collage then in
a Circus so Edgar spent two years at North Western University. Then
he went back to the Circus. He did his act first for children, then
for adults, and soom became "highly respected". Edgar Bergan was
the first ventriloquist to perform at New York's Place Theater. Edgar
said that the 10 years that he spent in the Circus were the best years
of his life.
Edgar worked at the Place Theater for a while and
it was during encore acts that he made Mortimer
Snerd. Mortimer would be the
only character to make Charlie jealous.
"Mortimer is a combination of week features."
said Edgar, all Charlie had to say was
"I just feel sorry for him.". The big opening to Charlie
and Edgar Bergen's act was at a night club.
Over night Charlie
McCarthy became a house hold name. Charlie
started out famous then Edgar. At first Edgar was not welcome at
parties without Charlie. Edgar
Bergen and Charlie McCarthy were on
the radio every Sunday night and listening to the show became a Sunday
night ritchual. His first proformance on the air was: Rudy Vallee's
Royal
Gelatin Hour, NBC radio show. Most people thought that
it must be hard for such a privet man to lead such a public life.
When Nell Bergren died at the age of 40 the only other women in Edgar's
life was Effie Clinker an old maid that
he had turned into a dummy. Soon not only was Edgar on the radio, he also
got in the 1943 moral boosting film of Stage Door Canteen.
Then in 1942 Edgar and Charlie worked
with Jimmy Stuert.
At one a performance Edgar saw a pair of legs in
the audience. At the end of his show he wanted to know who the girl
with the long legs was. The lucky girl that would put an end to Edgar
Bergen's 40 years of bachelor-hood was Frances Western. It was on
a fishing trip that Edgar asked her to marry him. The couple were
secretly wed in Mexico with two witnesses who did not speak a word of English.
It was hard but they managed to keep there wedding a secret for 5 months.
It took a while for Frances to get used to having Charlie
as her "son". The only thing that was bad about their marriage
was that there were long separations while Edgar and Charlie
were gone on business.
Edgar also loved to fly in his plane. Onc
he was in his plane flying over Palm Springs when he got a message telling
him to come home, his wife was in labor at Hollywood Prespateriean Hospital.
When his daughter Candice (Candy) was born she took over Charlie's
room which had a little bed and some chairs for Charlie.
Now the place where you could find Charlie
was under Edgar's bed or in a closet. When Candy got older
Edgar let her preform in a few of his shows. When Candy was an adult
she wrote the book Knock Wood, about how life was for her
growing up with Charlie. Candy
said "When I was young the happiest moments of my life were with my Dad
and Charlie on stage.". One of
the odd things that went on were family videos, which resembled screen
tests. Dispite her famous father Candy was not spoiled the way that
most famous children are. She had chores and other things that normal
kids did.
A few years later Edgar Bergen got on a T.V show.
It was in this T.V show that he made a new dummy Podine
Puffington, however there is not allot of information on Podine.
A lot people think that Mortimer Snerd
was Edgar's favorite dummy, even if he had owned Charlie
the longest. "Mortimer is stupid
but he has an advantage over us, he knows he's stupid," Edgar Bergen once
said. Edgar had a game show with Charlie
and Mortimer called "Can you trust your
wife?" but this show only lasted for one year. After a good 20 years
Edgar retired from the radio.
When he was 60 Edgar had a son named Chris.
It was one of the best things that had ever happened to him. Chris
never got the attention from Charlie,
Mortimer
and all of the other characters like Candy did, Chris and Edger were unsepritable.
Candy was not forgoten, she went on The Muppet Show and her apperence
was soon followed by her fathers.
It was on September 21, 1978 that Edgar said that
he would retire after a fair well tour in Las Verges, and Charlie
would go on perment display at the Smithsonian. Near the end of his
life Edger forgot his lines and missed his punch lines. He
also he would lose some of his memory. When he did his last show
he was able to get back into the swing of things. The next morning
Frances found that he had died in his sleep. She said that it looked
like a smile was on his face. "I think that he was taken at the right
time," said Chris Bergan. The sad thing is that when Edger died Charlie
and all of the others died too, Edgar
was no longer there to breath life into them.

I hope that my biography gave you some information that you did not
know. If there is some thing that you know that I happened to leave
out please E-mail me!